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These workers will not go on to develop the next great idea. They will be workers their whole lives. Starting earlier just means greater lifetime earnings. A brain just means more trouble for them as they will be bothered by the repetitive work, whereas duller minds tolerate it much better. In many cases what they do can literally be replaced by machines.

I also note that you implicitly call China uncivlised, which sounds awfully racist to me.

Correct, China isn't "civilised", in the Latin sense of the word. It's a cluster of medieval agrarian villages, with some industry springing up around major waterways. It's going through exactly the same industrial revolution that "civilised" nations went through in the past, with the same winners and losers.

You can educate the peasants all the like, but then they'll be educated and toiling in the rice paddies, or educated and toiling in the factories. Either way, they're not post industrial and don't have the same leisure to flout their education from the comfort of their keyboards that you and I enjoy, and judging them on that basis is neither fair nor reasonable.

Except this isn't game development. It's an production line. Attach your part to the assembly and pass it to the next station, repeat until the shift change whistle goes. It's mindless repetition for drones, not imaginative thinking to expand the mind.

However, if the kid is paid a decent wage, why not allow it? We are too quick to apply our values to other societies. Kids under the age of 10 scrape a living collecting garbage for recycling in the slums of India. All of a sudden the Chinese kid's life looks much better.

These workers will not go on to develop the next great idea. They will be workers their whole lives. Starting earlier just means greater lifetime earnings. A brain just means more trouble for them as they will be bothered by the repetitive work, whereas duller minds tolerate it much better. In many cases what they do can literally be replaced by machines.

Thank you Assistant Predestinator for reminding the Betas about Elementry Class Consciousness.All of the Alphas here remember their lessons and certainly agree with you.We all have our role: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon.